I was going to take a break from doing challenge maps so that I could concentrate on my Himin Reica project. But something about this challenge kept calling to me, and, I eventually gave in. The only problem I saw was that I was getting a late start and, as is often the case, I feared not having enough time to finish given the fact that I tend to try to work through Wilbur and Terragen. As I read through the challenge requirements, however, it occurred to me that neither Wilbur nor Terragen would be required for this challenge. Rather, I went to FTPro and cycled through worlds until I found something I thought I could work with. I snagged a few different screen shots to lay out the coast lines, some sea shading and lat/long lines and settled for a "quarter" world perspective similar to the one used in one of the old Forgotten Realms guides I once owned.

I've yet to lay out any features or locations, but I do have my brushes (tubes) set up and should be able to paint them in fairly quickly once I've decided where things are going to go. For the moment, however, I'm hungry, so I'll head out to breakfast, take a printout of the blank map and see what kind of progress I can make. Hopefully I'll have an update to post in a few hours. For now, here's the blank map with some sea shading and the lat/long lines.

The only other thing I am worried about is "size." I might have to sacrifice a bit of resolution to give myself a bit more physical room to work in features and labeling.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

Aval Penworth

04-19-2010, 01:35 PM

Cool. I take it your (over)work issues are now resolved. I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Looks interesting so far.

Greason Wolfe

04-19-2010, 01:49 PM

Eh, not really solved, per-si, but more manageable now, which gives me a bit of free time. Not much, mind you, but since I'm keeping this fairly simple (all done in an older version of Paint Shop with only a few layers), I'm not expecting it to take me a great deal of time like the erosion sequences Wilbur and renderings in Terragen do.

GW

Greason Wolfe

04-19-2010, 09:54 PM

Not much of an update here. For the most part, I spent a bit of time cleaning up along the coastal areas and enlarging things just a bit so that I'd have a bit more room to lay in features. Also added a simple cartouche, but that may change over time.

GW

Greason Wolfe

04-19-2010, 11:27 PM

A feature and labeling test for thoughts and suggestions. I kind of feel like the features need to be a bit bigger, but I'm worried that if I make them much bigger, they'll end up being overly dominant. Maybe what I'll do is make the features a bit larger only in the main area and leave those features out in the "unexplored" areas on the smaller side. Same goes for the labeling, though I have a bit more room to play in that regard.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

Ascension

04-19-2010, 11:32 PM

I like what you're doing here so far. I really like the edge where the mountains are and I think you should make some of those go outside of the arc of the globe...really make it feel 3d.

Managed to get some more work done on this map. Dropped in additional terrain features (including Ascension's suggestion about extending beyond the edges just a bit) and started labeling some of the known locations. Still got a ways to go, but progress is steady and I'm seeing no reason why I shouldn't be able to finish this before the challenge deadline.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

ravells

04-20-2010, 12:16 PM

This is now begining to look officially stunning!! Great work, love the forests in particular.

Jaxilon

04-20-2010, 12:42 PM

If you want to add to the 3d look of this I would think the labels near the front should be a little bigger than those in the back. Just a gradual shrinking as they get farther away. I know it's pretty much a math calculation and you'd have to do it for each size label but it seems it would enhance the illusion. As it is, with all the labels being equal it's like you have a 3d map and a 2d map on top of each other. I've never tried what I'm saying either, so mind you, it might look terrible but it's a thought you might want to explore.

Oh, and this is looking way cool man.

Greason Wolfe

04-20-2010, 02:24 PM

I'll have to fiddle with the labeling sizes and see what I can do. I'm not sure if my decades old version of Paint Shop can handle such minute size changes, but I may be able to swing something with a few different sizes and a bit of perspective shifting.

And thanks to all for the words of encouragement. I'm really enjoying working on this map. It's nice not having to wait for erosion cycles to finish-up, or hours long renders to complete just to see some progress. And it's giving me a few ideas for another map in a similar style, but with more detailed features.

GW

EDIT - Okay, took a bit of time to re-work some of the labeling to give it more "depth." While I could change the sizes easily enough, the perspective shifts didn't really have much of a visible effect. At this point, I'm not sure if the different sizes have that significant of an effect on the map as a whole, so I'll leave it to other eyes to decide if the effort was worth it. Also made a slight name change from "Burlytoes Brewery" to "Barleytoes Brewery." As one might guess, it is a hafling brewery, though I'm not really sure about the nature of their brew just yet. I'm sincerely hoping that PlayinItCool doesn't mind if we take a bit of creative license with some of the undetailed brews and/or locations.

GW (again)

### Latest WIP ###

Greason Wolfe

04-20-2010, 04:50 PM

One last update for today. Had to shift the location of Burdisson's Brewery so that it matched up with the story. Then expanded the associated forest a bit and added in two rivers as well as Boar's Head and Sarath in an attempt to get all the references in place. At this point, I'd say I'm about half done with the map. I want to add in more places to visit and some notes along the side (suggested places to visit and brew rumors compiled by Stori) and finish detailing out another round or two of terrain features.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

Steel General

04-20-2010, 05:36 PM

This is some cool stuff GW!

PlayinitCool

04-20-2010, 08:35 PM

I'm sincerely hoping that PlayinItCool doesn't mind if we take a bit of creative license with some of the undetailed brews and/or locations.

We're always looking for ideas from the community, that's what this whole thing is all about! Any new location ideas are always a plus, and if you have more in depth ideas than what you can put in the map, you can always stop by deviantART (http://fantasy-brewmasters.deviantart.com) and submit a location or setting outline!

Great map perspective, totally looking forward to seeing how it turns out :)

Greason Wolfe

04-21-2010, 12:42 AM

Well, seeing as how I couldn't sleep, which is going to make for a very long night at work, I decided to put a little more work in on this project. Added in some grasslands and jungles, expanded a forest and added in another mountain cluster. I'm not 100 percent on the grasslands just yet, but they'll be easy enough to scrap if the general consensus suggests that I do so. Still a ways to go, and now, in hind-sight, I think I should have used a bit more of the world for this, but then again, I might have lost some detail in doing so. It's hard to say at this point.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

Coyotemax

04-21-2010, 01:09 AM

I haven't said anything yet much on any of the contestants for this challenge, but I just had to say I love the way this is going.

Greason Wolfe

04-22-2010, 01:01 PM

So I spent yesterday trying to catch up on my sleep and didn't accomplish anything with this map. This morning, however, I've managed a bit of work and made some subtle changes to the map that, I hope, better promote the suggested projection. Based on Jaxilon's suggestion about the text getting smaller as it moved towards the edges of the globe, I thought it would be even better if the terrain features did the same thing. About two hours worth of work to re-construct the terrain features in this fashion seems (and I must stress "seems") to have done the trick. I also made a couple changes to the Black Iron Butte area. I didn't really like the way it looked before and wanted that particular area to be dominated by a larger mountain. Again, I think I've accomplished that feat.

Beyond that, I'm a bit hesitant to fill in too much more of the map besides the main continent. I'll definitely do some work along the coastal areas, but want to leave the interiors blank as a suggestion of "un-tasted" areas. I'm gonna try to add in a few more locations on the main continent but need to find that balance between detail and clutter. Other than that, I think I'm very close to being done with this map.

As always, comments, suggestions and criticisms are welcome.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

Jaxilon

04-26-2010, 01:04 PM

I still like how this is looking. I haven't seen anyone do anything quite like it (I've only been here a few months though).

Now, I'm not saying you have to do this but as I was looking at this today I was thinking it's too bad the Labels don't curve more like the map. I think the straight lettering kills off a bit of the curved feeling. Like I said, maybe it's just me but if others agree you might want to see about making it look like the labels are written "on the map". To me it looks like the labels are there so we know what is what but are not really a part of the map. If you have access to a globe and took a look at it I think you would get what I'm so pathetically trying to explain :) I also know labels can be a pain and you would have to think about the curve of the globe as you designed each one but in the end I think it might look even better than it already does.

Anyway, just in case you wanted more work there you have it, lol.

Nice job GW, it really is a nice map

Greason Wolfe

04-27-2010, 08:13 AM

As if I need even more work :D I'm still pulling mega-long days at work, just not as many of them in a row as I was pulling before. And I did think about that whole "curved along the plane of the globe" effect for the labeling. Unfortunately, the only way I might be able to accomplish something along those lines (with my ancient version of Paint Shop) would be to place each individual letter separately, and even in doing that, I'd still be grossly limited in terms of size and readability. Still, once I have everything finished up (and with these couple extra days before the challenge deadline) I may experiment just a bit. As it stands right now, I'm revamping a couple things such that the map does a better job of meeting the challenge requirements, which, I hope, to have finished up today.

GW

Greason Wolfe

04-27-2010, 09:18 PM

So, as I said in the previous post, I've been doing a little revamping of the map to better meet the challenge requirements. One of the things I was lacking was a bit of separation between the continents. Fixing that wasn't so much a problem as it required about 15 minutes of editing in FTPro and taking a new set of snapshots to set up the perspective of the map. Of course, with the changes in the coastlines and general shape of the land masses, I've had to re-lay the land features and shift a few things around just a bit, but that was just fine with me as I wasn't particularly happy with the way the grass/plains were turning out, and I thought the forests could use a bit of tightening. At this point, I've managed to rebuild the "edges" of the world as they have been explored/taste-tested by Boran and Stori. I should be able to wrap up the main continent over the next couple of days (it would only take me a day if I didn't have a four hour seminar to go to Wednesday afternoon) and have a final version ready to go by late Thursday or early Friday.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

Greason Wolfe

04-29-2010, 03:27 PM

Well, I've been sick as a dog these last couple of days, :mrgreen: and haven't gotten as much done on this as I had hoped. Still plugging away at it though, and I'll just have to hope that the threads don't get locked until Friday afternoon so that I'll have a snowball's chance in hell of finishing this up. In any event, here's a bit of progress.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

Ramah

04-29-2010, 05:54 PM

Really liking what you're doing with this map Greason. :)

I love how the perspective of the elements changes as they are placed around the globe - that top continent looks really great.

I sure do hope you have time to get more done on this before the deadline. Would be nice to see a Greason entry in the challenge that is nearly/finished. :D

Greason Wolfe

04-29-2010, 06:16 PM

@ Ramah - I hope so as well. I think, in the end, it might still be a bit sparse in some areas, but . . . Well, there was supposed to be some uncharted territory anyhow. :lol:

I did manage to get a bit more work done on this, but desperately need to lay down for a while, now. Sneezing my head off and trying to hack up a lung while placing the various symbols just isn't working well. In any event, hopefully I'll still have a few hours in the morning to work on this, depending on what time the threads are actually closed. There's really not that much more to do as far as the map, itself, goes. The extra embellishments might not get done, however, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens with that.

On a side note . . . It's a shame my plan to move into a new apartment fell through. I'm still stuck with a dial-up connection which limits the file sizes I can upload to about 1.5 megs before timing out (don't know if it is a problem at the guild's end or just my junky service, though I strongly suspect it is my service). If I could go with a physically larger map, I think I could do so very much more with this. Ah, but that is life, is it not?

GW

### Latest WIP ###

Ramah

04-29-2010, 07:48 PM

Dial-up? :S

Oh my word... is your appartment located in the 90's?

Greason Wolfe

04-29-2010, 08:04 PM

:lol:

No, actually it's still in the 80's. They've done all the work for FiOS hook-ups in the area except laying the actual groundwork. Apparently there are being conflicts between the installers and a number of construction sites. I believe, however, that my block is next in que for the groundwork, then it's just a matter of subscribing.

GW

Steel General

04-29-2010, 08:18 PM

Well I hope they actually finish out the FiOS, have they actually announced they were going to complete the "installation".

With the impending sale to Frontier Communications who knows what may happen...

Greason Wolfe

04-30-2010, 10:21 AM

I think, or at least this is what I've heard, that here, in Oregon, the impending sale has been, at least temporarily, blocked. But I heard that a while ago, so I can't be sure what the actual up to date status on the sale is. As for finishing the installation, the thing that was holding them up, in my neighborhood in particular, was some planned road construction. Until those plans were finalized, they didn't want to do the roadside installation for fear of having their cables/wiring "buried under pavement."

And thanks to the extra couple of days extension (in light of potential forum glitches) I'm going to take advantage of the extra time to try to get over this flu-bug I caught. I am, as it happens, one of those people that get hit hard by the flu, but only for a short period of time rather than suffering for several days on end. It's mostly done now, but one more good day of sleep won't hurt anything.

GW

Steel General

04-30-2010, 05:13 PM

GW - I work for Verizon and will be moving over to Frontier as part of the sale. I have not heard of any road-blocks in Oregon related to the sale (not that there couldn't be) other than some PUC issues which I believe were resolved.

Greason Wolfe

04-30-2010, 06:50 PM

Yeah, like I said, I'm not sure about that whole deal. It may have been those PUC issues or simply have been that some folks were talking about trying to block the sale. It was some months back that I remember reading some vague article in the paper about the impending sale. Ironically, Qwest is selling out here in Oregon as well. Go figure. If we aint careful, we might turn out to be those country bumpkins everyone else thinks we are! :D

GW

P.S. And don't get me started on the idiot drivers here in Oregon. I like to believe they're all transplants, but, sadly, I know better.

Greason Wolfe

05-01-2010, 07:58 PM

Ugh! I hate being sick. I've spent the last hour just staring at this map and saying to myself "I need to get some work done on this . . . " But my mind is just absolutely blank. The lights are out and nobody's home. It's really gonna irk me if I don't get this done and the clock is working against me.

GW

Greason Wolfe

05-03-2010, 12:39 PM

So I'm still fighting with this silly cold/flu thing (mostly just trying to hack up a lung at this point), but I did manage to get some work done. Still got a little bit more work to do as far as terrain features go and labeling, plus a few embellishments and I should be able to call this done. Working on this has given me a couple of ideas I might try with FTPro in the near future, but they will have to wait until I catch up on all the household projects I've put on hold while working on this map and being sick.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

Greason Wolfe

05-03-2010, 02:52 PM

Well, I think I'm going to have to call this a finished work. As stated earlier, I think I could have done much more with it if I had more room to work (read that as faster connection for uploading purposes). As it stands, I may be on a faster connection here in the next couple of weeks, depending on when I can schedule the hook-up. At which point, win, lose, or draw, I may take another shot at this map just for the sake of argument.

Anyways, here's the final version. It could probably use a few more labels (i.e. rivers, oceans, forests and miscellaneous locations), but I'm starting to fade and the creative juices have all but dried up for today.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

moutarde

05-03-2010, 04:25 PM

Well done Greason! It really looks fantastic :)

Greason Wolfe

05-03-2010, 06:46 PM

Thanks, moutarde. There are parts of it that I'm not particularly happy with, but that could just be a matter of not feeling well and being in a particularly critical mood (I always get that way when not feeling well). On the whole, I'm fairly happy with it, now it's up to the rest of the fine folk here at the guild to decide it's fate. :D